


meet me in the garden

by Etheostoma



Category: Hadestown - Mitchell
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Blatant Abuse of Mythology, F/M, First Meetings, Memory Loss, Mythology - Freeform, Snapshots through time, So much angst, multiple first kisses
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-18
Updated: 2020-04-18
Packaged: 2021-03-01 19:08:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 10,575
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23722132
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Etheostoma/pseuds/Etheostoma
Summary: It is not only mortals who have drunk from the River Lethe.Persephone lives countless lives throughout history, remembering none of them, always watched by one who cannot shake the sorrow in his eyes and the regret that dogs his every step.It's a sad song, and it is sung again, and again...
Relationships: Hades/Persephone (Hadestown)
Comments: 6
Kudos: 57





	meet me in the garden

**Author's Note:**

> Well, THIS turned into a monster of a story. It started as a random idea while I was running and....ran away from me. I had so much fun writing it, though, and sincerely hope that you get as much enjoyment out of reading it as I did creating it.
> 
> Mythologies referenced are Greek, Roman, Norse, Hindu, and Native American. I do not profess to be an expert in ANY of them--I know just enough to get myself into trouble and to have some fun playing with them.

Winter comes to its end, and Persephone returns to the world of the living as she has done now for centuries, bringing the cheerful optimism of longer days and sunlight in her wake. Her arrival is a breath of fresh air, the promise of dewey mornings and long, sultry afternoons washing across the land as its lady returns from her time below with her husband.

Hades escorts her to the edge of his borders with a heavy heart, eyes downcast and slow of tread, unwilling to part with his wife yet again. “Must you go?” he asks, as he always does, clasping her hands tightly in his.

She gives him a sad glance, raises one hand to touch his cheek in a fleeting caress. “You know I must,” she replies.

His reply, borne of frustration and fear is less than kind—hers in turn even less so.

This homecoming is not as bountiful as many long past, as Persephone walks the remainder of those long lonely steps to the surface with tears in her eyes and an ache in her heart. The agony in Hades’ eyes and the venom in his parting words were more painful than they have been in many long years. He loathes their time apart, lets it poison his mind and feed his doubts—and no matter how she seeks to soothe him it is never enough.

They are still early enough in their marriage for her to consider it little more than a lover’s quarrel, but even so the memory rankles in her mind, sours recollections of time they _do_ get to spend together. She already misses him, already wishes to make amends, damn his irritating self—

—and now she cannot return for half a year.

Her heart is leaden in her chest, angry tears pricking hotly in her eyes. Stupid, _stupid_ man. He doubts so, always, when she loves him more than she can even bear. Bastard.

She stumbles blindly down the path to her mother’s cottage, teeth worrying her lip and her gaze flitting more often than not back down the winding, darkening way toward her husband (toward _home_ ) as she slowly presses onward.

“It’s gettin’ worse, ain’t it?” her momma says, not a hint of question about it as she draws Persephone into a brief hug. There is worry in her eyes, but somethin’ else, too—a sly, coy look that Persephone would otherwise immediately notice, but caught up as she is in her temper and regret over her and Hades’ parting words she doesn’t see it, doesn’t sense the change in the wind and sense of impending doom that looms ominously in the air.

“Mmm.” She mumbles an ambivalent reply, face and eyes carefully blank—because even though he’s a stubborn, self-righteous, arrogant, _presumptive_ pain-in-the-ass, he’s still _her_ pain-in-the-ass and their business is theirs and theirs alone—and paces into the kitchen to slump down in a chair and rest her chin on her arms.

“Can’t keep doin’ this, daughter,” Demeter says, following behind and lingering in the doorway. “World’s already startin’ to hurt, and you two have only been together for a few hundred years.”

Persephone’s eyes narrow. “I love that man, momma,” she hisses, eyes flashing, “an’ he loves me. You’ve never liked that, and never will, but that’s the way of things and they ain’t gonna change any time soon.” She shoves her chair back and stalks through the cottage to the back door, flinging it open to stare out at the endless sprawl of fields behind the fence of their back garden, freshly turned earth ready to be sown and tended anew.“We don’t like to be parted, neither one of us, but we do it, because we must.”

“Didn’t sound like he wanted to, this time,” Demeter poses, following along in her daughter’s wake.

“Never does,” Persephone answers absently, thumb pressing to the band of cool metal around her finger. “Doesn’t mean nothin’ except he’ll be watin’ overlong to see me again. But I’ll be back, and we’ll keep on.”

Demeter plucks something from the air, a small cup unassumingly filled with clear, cool water. “Even so, I can feel the world pullin’” she says, resting a gentle hand on her daughter’s back. “You and he, you’re both so passionate and polarized, you break the earth when you fight and send it into despair when you leave with him.”

Jerking away, Persephone bolts out into the garden, kicking off her boots and sinking her toes into the earth, relishing the feel of the cool soil against her skin. “But I love him,” she returns, “an’ he loves me, and we work through it, in the end.”

Undeterred, her mother follows. “But will ya always?” she poses, cradling the cup in her hands, a strange quirk to her mouth and her eyes sharp pinpricks in her sun-darkened face. “Will ya throw away everything we’ve always had, everything you used to be to stay with him?”

“Already have, an' I’m happy with it.” Persephone spits out the words like clockwork, an old argument resurfacing which she has no patience to fully repeat.

“Peace, daughter, peace.” Demeter extends the cup, an offering, a gesture of goodwill. “Have a drink and come sit inside and talk of happier things with yer old momma.” Arm extended, she holds the cup of water until Persephone takes it, brings it to her lips.

Rolling her eyes, Persephone takes a sip. “Fine, but I’ll hear no more ill talk about my husband.”

Demeter smiles, and it is not pleasant. “That should be easy enough, my daughter.”

Persephone drinks again, and then freezes, a shiver wracking her body as a wave of magic washes through her. “What—“ an agonized howl bursts from her lips, the earthen cup falling to bounce across the ground, and she hunches over on herself, arms curling about her middle, eyes clenched shut as her head _burns._

Persephone melts away, each and every little personality quirk and sense of identity and _memory_ evaporating into thin air as she is re-written in one blistering instant. The realms feel the shift, those above and below freezing where they stand as everything, _everything_ is cast anew and reforged.

Deep down below, Hades _roars_ in his Underworld _,_ his fury and pain endless and his dark eyes blazing like coals in his death-pale face. He can feel it in the instant it takes effect, for it is his queen and his waters that affect her so.

Gods and goddesses are not meant to drink from the River Lethe.

Mortals, yes—they drink, they move on to their next life, if they live it well they’ll remember. Immortals, though, are a different matter.

Hades is king of the underground. Down below, all the way under, the Asphodel Meadows, Elysium, and Tartarus, and all the rivers—his domain, his responsibility. How in all the blazing kingdoms did Demeter manage to acquire some of that sacred water?

It matters not, now, for his wife and lover is lost to him, lost and unknowing and forever now out of reach.

Once an immortal drinks, they do not remember, cannot be reborn. His realm is filled with water, the River Styx flowing along his borders, its cousins the Acheron and Phlegethon and Cocytus, and of course the River Lethe. Lethe, who takes everything one is and strips it away, leaving nothing but unfulfilled potential.

Strung out hundreds of mile from Lethe, split by the grey fields of the Asphodel Meadows, is the River Mnemosyne—sixth and unsung, known only to Hades and denizens of his realm—but none with ichor coursing through their veins have ever sampled those waters. Those waters, too, cannot be collected and transported, can only be taken knowingly from the river itself by the one who intends to drink. The cost of trying, and failing…

He bellows, slams his fist straight through the solid rock of his cavernous hall, and weeps tears of night as he feels her spirit leave him, the bond between them severed as her memory slips away. The ground quakes, rent asunder from below to above, and the dead quake where they stand as the tide of his wrath rolls across the land.

But in the end, it does nothing.

Nothing, _nothing._

Still she is lost, still she is gone—no memory of herself, no memory of him, no memory at _all._

Demeter welcomes this confused, cold girl back into her life up above, guides her into her cottage with a gentle arm around her back and cool fingers at her brow as she brushes unruly hair gently behind an ear. She wears a self-satisfied smirk, uncaring of the tides of despair emanating from the realm below.

Her child is here, buried beneath this blank slate, and she will nurture and guide her, paint her back onto this empty canvas and re-sow seeds that had already once been harvested.

“Welcome home, Kore,” she whispers, closing the door gently behind her, “Welcome home.”

* * *

The world knows several centuries of fruitful seasons, spring and summer raging triumphant and knocking back fall and winter to a scant few months of the year—but when they do come, they come hard, and fast, and leave man and beast alike reeling from the frigid cold and brutal ferocity of their onslaught.

Decades and centuries come and go, humans passing like dandelion seeds on the wind, there one day and gone the next, the gods are present through it all. Across the bright Mediterranean now sits a little hut along the snaking Nile, a ramshackle but homey little thing that arose from nowhere around the same time Xerxes took Sparta, just out on the outskirts of the great city with its Lighthouse and Library and great play of power.

Proserpina and her mother have no need for human politics, ignore it all and tend the earth with a quiet care that brings rich growth and bountiful harvests each year. They are together, and content, and for many an age that is enough.

It so happens, however, that one fine spring day the younger goddess is out on her own, tending a plot she keeps separate from all the others as her own little paradise. It is set away from her mother’s far reaching gaze, and on this particular day a stranger appears in her private Eden turn her little world on its head. He is tall, far taller than any of the local mortals, and there ain’t no pretending that _he_ is anything but a god.

“You ain’t from around here,” she hums, casting a sly look across her garden to the dark man lurking just outside the fence of trees. Momma didn’t like her startin’ her own plot outside the boundaries of their hut, but she is her own woman and can do as she likes—so she had gone down the way, still within reach but out enough that Ceres couldn’t see _everything,_ coaxing a row of big old sycamores to shelter her and turnin’ up a grove of palm trees and lush flowers just for her.

His dark eyes are sad as the peer down at her. “No,” he agrees, “I’m not.” His lips tighten in a slight frown, head canting as he drinks in the sight of her like a thirsting man long without a draught. “Neither are you.”

Proserpina blinks, liquid amber eyes widening in confusion, her plush lips parting. “How d’you know that?” she asks, placing her hands on her hips and turning to face him square-on. “Only been here a few centuries, an’ I know Mama kept things quiet when we moved.” Her brow furrows as she tries in vain to reach beyond the scope of those memories, a pained look clouding her features as she collides with that ever-present glass wall that seems to keep her trapped within her mind.

“I’m sure she did,” he rumbles, and the sheer _menace_ in his voice has her withdrawing despite herself—and she ain’t no coward, nossir, but there is so much hatred and despair packed into those words that she can hardly bear it.

The dark stranger pauses, clenches his teeth, and passes a quick hand across his brow, apology writ in his eyes. “Apologies,” he offers, emotions now tightly-controlled and under wraps. “I do not mean to frighten you.”

“Ain’t scared,” she retorts, crossing the remainder of garden to stand before him, chin jutting out in obvious challenge to his words. “Never have been.”

That strange pained look spasms across his face once more, and Fates if that don’t send an answering pang of sadness through her own self as well.

Who _was_ this strange god standing before her?

Her gaze sweeps across him, taking stock of his dark toga, worn but for the uncommonly dark color in the current style. She takes in his pale face and dark eyes and hair, the hint of a few old, puckered scars just barely visible at the top of his well-muscled chest. More striking than his physical presence, however, is the aura of sheer _power_ emanating from him, a resonant sense of cold, dark danger that lingers about him like a heady cologne and sends a shudder of an unknown _something_ rushing through her.

“Who _are_ you?” she asks, plucking a bright lily from its stem and twirling it between her fingers to avoid the buzz of that intense gaze. “Never heard much ‘bout anyone like you from momma, and no one else like _us_ really comes around these parts, much.”

Hades’ hand twitches at his side, as if aching to rise and take her own, and he stills the motion with a sharp frown and a clenched fist. “They call me Pluto, ‘round these parts,” he tells her lowly, locking those bottomless eyes on her own, “but I tend to go by Hades.”

“Hades,” she hums thoughtfully, running the name slowly over her tongue and savoring the flavor and tang of it, passing it slowly through her lips to breathe it out into the open air between them.

And damned if that tall, impossibly strong man just _freezes_ where he stands, pinning her in place with a blazing sweep of his dark eyes. “Don’t—“ he grits out, hand rising to fist over his heart, an expression of pure agony glancing unchecked across his face before it shutters closed once more.

Her heart twists, and she’s moving before it registers, catching one big palm in both of her own hands. “Don’t what?” she asks, thumbs passing across his knuckles without thought in a soothing gesture.

“It hurts too much,” he rumbles, making no move to free his hand from her grasp, putty in her hands as she smooths the creases of his palm.

“Your name?”

“ _Everything.”_

Her lips part to ask another question, puzzlement writ into every fiber of her being, but the words freeze in her throat as he stoops suddenly and pulls her tight against him, cradling the back of her head with one hand and and cupping her cheek with the other.

“Persephone.”

It is a whisper against her lips before he claims them, pressing his mouth against hers in a soul-searingly tender kiss. It is familiar and not all at once, and suddenly she feels exposed, bared in a way she has no knowledge of as she rests pliant in his arms. The name—again familiar but not—stirs something long buried, kindles a long-dormant fire, and she finds herself returning his embrace without thought. Her arms rise to twine about his neck as she presses herself tightly against him, chasing his breath with her own and kissing him again, a sweet little touch of lips against lips that nevertheless sends shivers of _something_ shooting straight down her spine.

Her head aches and she groans, and instantly he is releasing her, tilting her chin up to peer into her eyes. “What is it?” His concern is touching, if confusing, and she shakes her head as the world spins.

“I don’t know…” Trembling, she stumbles to her little stone bench and all but falls onto it, burying her head in her hands. “I think…ya need to go,” she tells him, ignores the knife that stabs into her heart at the thought, listens instead to the throbbing in her head and the twinge in the back of her mind that says Ceres is due back soon.

He can’t mask the hurt that flits across his face, but then he nods, impassive, and moves away. “I’ll return tomorrow,” he tells her, and it is not a question.

Then he is gone, and her momma is returnin’ and Proserpina can’t begin to say how much time has passed between the two.

Ceres takes one look at her daughter and blanches, nostrils flaring as she surveys the bright little garden and her shaking daughter. With a flick of her wrist, she conjures a small jug of water and offers it to the younger goddess. “Have a drink, my dearest, it will help you with your head.”

And Proserpina drinks, and forgets, and is lost once more.

* * *

There’s a garden in the north, tended by a goddess of considerable beautify and intelligence, where the fruits of the gods grow and immortality runs ripe and plush. Idun tends them, goddess of spring and rejuvenation, kept company by a mother for whom the mortals have no name or knowledge. The daughter is a rarity among these parts, with her darker skin and and honeyed eyes, up amongst the blondes and gentle brunettes of the native humans. She hasn’t been here long, just long enough to summon myth and mysticism amongst the mortals, long enough to be given a task by her daddy who in these parts takes the guise of an old man with one eye and a raven on his shoulder.

Even so, she is content, has her trees and fruits and flowers, and those she has _always_ known. Her garden is a bubble of greenery amid the northern climate, lush with rosemary and wolfsbane and forget-me-nots, surrounded by towering conifers and spruces. The spring and summer are bright and bountiful, the winters harsh, but she and her mother are content and oversee their pocket of this universe in peace.

Her name tastes strange on her lips, a moniker bestowed by the mortals and their myths, but she answers to it, for that is what Mama calls her as well and she supposes that it _must_ be right for that to be the case. She don’t love it, though, calls herself different names in the night, names that lurk on the edge of memory and make her feel whole.

Summer is waning by the time she hears it, a strange fell song on the wind, bearing the cool caress of winter and the promise of long, dark nights and deathly-cold frosts. It brings with it a man, tall and dark, who stalks the perimeter of her garden for many long days before she sees fit to acknowledge him.

No one crosses her border without her say-so.

Finally, the day comes where she sets aside her trowel and rises, brushing dirt from her skirts, and admits him with a twist of her thoughts. “Who are you, who lurks so on the edge of my garden?” she asks him, allowing him just the barest of purchases in her territory, feeling the touch of his own vast aura against her own and unable to withhold a gasp at the black hole that threatens to consume her.

“They call me Hel, here,” he tells her in a low drawl, lips quirking as she casts her eyes up and down his decidedly masculine form. 

“Don’t look like Hel,” she retorts, flipping her long curls behind her back and arching an eyebrow. The mortals have many stories of the elusive goddess of the dead, and this man certainly ain’t her.

His looming figure blurs and shifts, a grotesque, half dead female glamour forming over where she knows him to actually stand. “Mortals see what they want to see,” he replies, raising one shoulder in a “what have you” gesture before allowing the guise to fall with a twist of his fingers. “I rule the Underworld, and so here I am Hel.”

“I like this look better,” she hums, sliding forward before she can tell her feet to stop and plucking at the collar of his silk tunic, palm sliding to lay flat against where his heart beat a furious pattern in his chest. Absently, she wonders what in the nine realms she is doing, bein’ so bold with a man she hardly knows, but somethin’ about him is so damn familiar she can’t seem to help herself.

Her other hand plays with the chain around his neck, a simple thing for a man of such obvious status, just a plain chain holding a large, simple ring to his throat. “What’s this?”

The god— _Hel_ , her mind snickers—flinches beneath her cool touch and jerks back. “It’s—it doesn’t matter,” he growls, and she imagines if he were a dog his ears would be back and his hackles raised.

Idun’s hands raise appeasingly. “Didn’t mean no harm,” she soothes, fingers nevertheless still tracing the edge of the cold metal, quite unable to pull away.

He catches the offending hands in his own, thumbs sliding to press hard into the soft skin of her wrists, holding her in place. “You never do,” he murmurs, and ain’t that a strange thing to say.

“Have we met before?” she asks him, jerking her hands free with a slight grimace and banishing the forming bruises with a slight twist of will. “Think I’d remember a big strong man like you.”

He laughs, a raw and soulless sound that doesn’t suit him in the slightest—voice like that, a man should have a deep, warm laugh to match. “Memory is a fickle thing,” he tells her, and there is no humor in his voice as he gives that horrible wracking laugh once more. “A cruel mistress not to be tempted.”

Idun’s heart skips a beat, a steady, dull ache stirring in the pit of her stomach, ricocheting up to her head to echo and bounce in her brain. “What—“ Her palm rises, presses against her forehead. “It hurts,” she murmurs, looking up at him with wide brown eyes, confusion and pain dulling their expressive light.

“Don’t want that,” he tells her, and she senses he is completely earnest. Slowly, his big old hands grasp her shoulders and draw her against his chest, slide to her back to press her against him. He tucks her ever so gently beneath his chin, burying his nose in her hair, and by the gods she lets him. Somethin’ about him feels _right_ , and the crisp scent of him where her nose is pressed into his neck—ash and smoke and metals and earth—is like comin’ home.

“What’s your actual name?” she mumbles into his tunic, arms rising unbinding to curl around his waist.

“Hades,” he murmurs into her hair, so softly she thinks for a moment she’s imagined it. “My name is Hades.”

The pain laces through her like a bolt of lightning, sending her staggering back from him clutching her head. “Nonononononono,” she whines, twisting her head back and forth trying to shake the pain loose, “It hurts. Why does it _hurt?_ ” She staggers to her knees, buries her hands in the soil to ground herself, feels the touch of the earth and the whisper of life around her. When she looks up again the strange man is gone and it’s Momma with her in the garden, Momma with her eyes blazing in fury and mouth drawn back in a ferocious scowl, a tankard of water held tightly in her grasp.

“Drink,” she demands, thrusting the vessel toward her daughter. “It’ll help with the pain.”

And the daughter once again trusts the mother and drinks, and knows oblivion, and the pain passes on—

—forgotten.

* * *

The lands in this part of the world are not dictated by warm and cool, but rather wet and dry. In these lands, she brings rain and life, wets the earth and stirs new growth to spring forth cross the land.

Here she walls herself off with bamboo and eucalyptus, hides herself amongst the laurels and laburnum, and allows herself to dance along to the ebb and flow of the river and the monsoons. The mortals avoid her, for the most part, content to move along within the stream of time and leave her well enough alone outside it.

They make their myths, their stories, and she and her mama leave them to it. They call her mama Saranyu, in these parts, and she is Yami. They build their temples, leave their offerings, and she lets it go at that and ignores the twinge in her gut that tells her its wrong, wrong, all wrong.

She and Momma have set up along the eastern plains, below the mountains but high enough in the hills they can keep an eye on the mortals, and Momma leaves for weeks at a time to flit among the clouds and help stir the rains.

He comes to her in May this time, just as the rains are due to arrive—and her mother with them—and the earth is brittle and dry as a bone. Same as all the times before—not that she remembers—pale of skin and dark of hair and eye, though the hair is starting now to show a touch of silver at the brow.

This time he does not ask for permission, rises from below in the midst of her garden and plucks an orchid from its stem and tucks it behind her ear before she even knows he’s there.

He wears a dark pair of trousers cuffed at the ankles and a matching kurta, his light skin stark agains the pitch-black of the silk and the dark voids of his eyes.

“Thought you were supposed to be blue,” she hums, touching the flower with a gentle press of fingertips and otherwise ignoring him.

“Mortals,” he scoffs. “Always changing colors and adding arms when they have no need.”

She slides a look in his direction, drinking in the towering frame and rigid posture and resonance of power she can feel crackling through the air between them. “Haven’t seen ya around these parts before,” she says.

“I prefer to stay down below.” His reply is devoid of any inflection or emotion.

“Hmph.” She snorts and plucks a mangosteen from its stem, divests the fruit of its leathery shell and eats it slowly, making a face at the sticky juice that lingers on her fingers. “You’re here now, aren’t ya?”

When he fails to respond, she gives up her feigned disinterest and raises her head—

—only to find him staring intently at her in turn, those dark eyes focused on her hand and the fruit juice still collected there.

Her mouth opens, a question forming on her lips, and then it is gone, lost as she gasps at the electric shock of his hand closing about her wrist. He draws her hand to his lips, presses a delicate kiss to her knuckles, takes away the lingering sap of the fruit with a few well-placed swipes of his tongue.

“Oh.” Yami— _not_ Yami, that isn’t _right_ , isn’t her—raises her other hand, cups his cheek and draws her thumb against the roughly-trimmed beard at his chin.

His head tips, his lips press against the pad of her thumb, and she gasps again as a shiver passes through her at his touch.

“I—“

“Give me at least this,” he groans, cups her face in his broad palms and swipes his thumbs across her cheekbones. “Let me have this moment if nothing else.” He kisses her then, catching her lips between his with nothing else to serve as warning. It is chaste, at first, a tender brush of skin-on-skin as they move together.

Her body acts on its own, responds to him as though it _knows him,_ lips parting as his tongue swipes across them, open for him like the petals of one of her flowers opening to admit the sun.

Head tilting, he slants their mouths together more intently, shifting the dynamic of their kiss, devouring where he had at first only been tasting. His hands leave her face to bury themselves in her hair, combing through the unruly curls that follow her everywhere regardless of mortal fashion. “Lover,” he murmurs into her throat as he tears from her mouth for a much-needed breath, “I have missed you.”

She can do little more than gasp her assent, even though she does not know him, has never known him, has no idea of what he speaks—and doesn’t care, for his lips are once again on hers and her hands are curling at the nape of his neck and she’s drawing her fingernails through the fine hairs at the base of his head and delighting as he all but _purrs_ into her mouth, and—

 _Agony,_ white hot and sudden, strikes her like a sudden bolt of lightning. It _hurts,_ aches like nothing she has ever known. Her eyes fly open and she staggers back, arms curling protectively over her head as she slams her eyes shut and cowers back from him, overcome by the pain. “What—“

“Oh lover,” and the death god sounds like he is about to weep, his arms curling about her once more. He smooths a tender hand across her brow, as though trying to pull the ache out with it, and lays a soft kiss on the crown of his head. “You know I cannot bear to see your pain.”

In the midst of the flashing red agony there is the tender sensation of lips across hers, and then she suddenly feels _empty_ and the sky opens, torrents of cool water cascading from the dark clouds to soothe her their caress.

Tipping her head back, she closes her eyes, lets the water stream over her face, catching the drops in her mouth like a child and tries to drown out the agony pounding through her with each beat of her heart.

Afterwards, when Momma returns to ask what is wrong, she finds she cannot say.

* * *

This side of the world is green, so green, bountiful with flora and fauna alike. They've have been here for a while, this fresh place teemin’ with life and populated with humans who actually respect natural ways. She likes it here, has friends among the natives and spends many hours of her days teachin’ them how to grow and harvest the bounty the land has to offer.

They bring her gifts, beads and feathers, and keep her company as she works the land. There are settlers here, too, colonists from the other side of the world who come on ships and convert the land. However, she sees them more rarely, teaches them even less so—they are not inclined to listen, or to learn, so she ignores them who ignore her and leaves them to their fates.

A new god appears one day with the men the village whose borders she shares, rides in with them on a steed as black as pitch as they return from their hunt, his pale skin a stark contrast to the golden glow of his companions and the midnight coat of his mount. He wears just a simple breechcloth as they do, and his bared chest stands out against starkly the natural earthen tones of the woods, toned muscle showing old, _old_ scars stretched across that white skin. The men defer to him with an almost uncanny amount of respect as they dismount—respect for a god, her mind murmurs.

Eyes bright with curiosity, she rises from where she has been shucking maize and stretches, smoothing her skirt over her legs and brushing the worst of the dirt away. She hadn’t thought there were any other human-shaped gods in these parts, hadn’t heard whisper or murmur of anyone like her or her mama comin’ into this territory.

Momma is out, this day, off with a neighboring tribe to help with the harvest, and so it is just her. She has many names here, the mortals personifying multiple aspects of her powers, but her momma calls her Kore so that is what she calls herself.

The stranger parts from the hunting party with a slight bow that is returned in kind, albeit much deeper, and approaches, keeping his eyes cast low. “May I join you?” he asks, and Kore laughs, the sound bright and musical.

“Here in the dirt?” she replies, giggling at the image of this man—undeniably a god of some standing—standing kneeling to perform chores. Doesn't matter that she is a goddess doin’ the same thing—there is somethin’ about him that makes her think he didn’t _do_ domestic, not like this.

His answering chuckle is low and rich, and sends a warm shiver creepin’ down her spine. “If that’s what it takes,” he murmurs.

Kore gives him a bright grin and settles back, reaching for another ear of maize and begins efficiently stripping it of its husk. The clean ears go into one basket, the discarded husks into another to be repurposed. “So what brings you ‘round these parts?” she asks conversationally, biting back a giggle as he fumbles with the maize in his hand.

“Bit of sightseein’,” he drawls in that gravelly voice. He squints at the remaining maize for a moment and then snorts and flicks his fingers. In an instant, it is separated and neatly sorted, the cleaned ears with their life-bringing kernels settled in their basket and the other heaped high with piles of husk.

“Cheater,” she teases, poking her tongue out at him. “Don’t learn nothin’ doin’ it that way.”

A muscle in his cheek twitches, and for a moment she thinks it is restrained laughter until she sees the sorrow hanging low in his eyes. “I always have to play by the rules,” he answers quietly. “Sometimes it’s nice to be able to take a shortcut here and there.”

The woods around them have grown silent, the tribe leaving her to her peace and returning to their full village. Only the birds remain to keep them company, calling from the heights of the surrounding hickories and sycamores.

“Whose rules?” she queries, feelin’ foolish and naive but havin’ no idea what he means.

The dark god’s lips thin, brows drawing together in a deep furrow that ages him centuries. “Mine, my brothers’, the _universe’s—“_ he snaps, spinning away to pace a handful of steps along a game trail, “—what does it matter _whose_ if I cannot, at least occasionally, win?”

She frowns, lips pursing. “Winnin’ ain’t everything,” she lectures, coming up behind him to lay a hand on his shoulder. “Sometimes it’s the journey that means more.”

He laughs, a hollow sound that evinces pain rather than joy. “You wouldn’t say that if you knew the journey,” he spits out, glaring at the oak in front of him. The shoulder under her palm tenses, muscles drawing tight. “Ain’t no-one involved in this journey who hasn’t been hurt far too much than they deserve.”

Without realizing it, her hand slips from his shoulder, slides lower to trace the puckered white flesh of old scars that lace his back and sides. “Who, you?” she asks, unable to notice the tremors that wrack his sturdy frame as she plies his scars with her inquisitive touches.

He scoffs. “Me, I can bear—been hurt before, will hurt again before it’s all over,” he rumbles. He swings around, and her breath catches at the wild look in his eyes—a heady cocktail of regret, sorrow, fury, and somethin’ that makes her insides clench. “ _You,_ however, deserve none of it.”

“Me?” She cocks her head, completely baffled. “I ain’t hurtin’”

Broad hands settle on her arms, thumbs curving around her biceps and smoothing over a beaded armband she wears around one. “You _are,_ ” he insists, “you _will.”_ He shakes his head, eyes closing in obvious discomfort—though she’d be hard pressed to say whether it’s actual pain or all just somethin’ in his head. “You are always in pain,” he tells her, dipping his head low to press his nose to hers, look her in the eye with those midnight irises, “and I can always feel it.”

Kore’s breath freezes, an icy cold terror sliding through her, curling up through her chest—her heart _aches—_ and snaking its way down and out. “Then why dontcha do somethin’?” she asks, unable to mask the panic in her voice as her heart inexplicably accelerates. She hides her face against his neck rather than meet those terrible eyes, wraps her arms around his back as she tries to siphon off some of his warmth.

“I’ve been tryin’” and _oh_ the regret and frustration in that deep voice. “Nothing works.” Thunder cracks in the distance and his voice goes even _lower_. “Nothin’ _ever_ works.”

She can feel the pain takin’ hold, her hands beginning to shake even with the added boon of his power against her, and she shudders, stumbling back and bowing in on herself. “Make it stop,” she whispers, lookin’ up at him with panic in her brown eyes. “I don’t like hurtin’ like this.”

His face crumples in on itself, and she feels a momentary stabbing regret for sayin’ anything, then even that is eclipsed as the pain steals across her and whites out her senses. Distantly, she hears the soothing growl of his voice, feels a touch upon her brow, and then…nothin’.

* * *

Spring and summer ain’t so pretty, sometimes.

Sometimes, seasons don’t change even when she _is_ there, and all she sees is endless winter, the air cold and empty even when the climate is warm. These times, her eyes reflect the sun rather than absorb it, hollow, empty and unseeing.

She keeps the leaves green and the fruits ripe, but the innocence is burned out of her before she can ever appreciate it, before she can ever be as she was meant to be. Her normally bright face is dull, her lively steps stilted, and she shuffles from day to day mindlessly, a mirror to the mortals around her.

Can’t help it, sometimes, can’t help but fall victim to the hopelessness and despair and become a minnow among the river and surrender to the swell of the current—

—times like now, when there’s a wall (a _mortal_ wall) winding through the city, splittin’ a nation in two and doing a whole hell of a lot worse than that. The people weep and flee and scrabble for purchase against the pits they’re sinkin’ into, are herded and kept and executed like livestock.

Ill at heart, ill in soul, she can’t stand it. She’s a goddess of life, rebirth—this living mortal hell ain’t how it’s supposed to be, not at all.

She drinks, this time ‘round, finds her solace in wine and whiskey, drawn to the blissful mindlessness it offers like a ship’s captain to a siren’s call. She ain’t a goddess here—what use do these poor wretches have for gods, or God, or anything that offers hope?

Ain’t none for her, ain’t none for them.

Momma tried to stop her, at the beginning, when the mortals started culling each other and she first turned to the drink when she could do naught but watch in despair—took it away, poured it out, hid it far away.

Kore didn’t care, just found more.It makes her forget, don’t it? Worth it, then, even for a few blissful hours of oblivion.The city around her is empty, raid sirens screaming in the distance. She had a garden once—it burned, one day, when a bomb fell.

No use makin’ another, not now.

She downs the rest of her whiskey and laughs, a dry cackle that don’t suit her at all and makes her heart crack and bleed just a little more red in her chest. He doesn’t come this time, the man she don’t know she needs, the man she don’t even _know_.

If she _did_ , she’d say it’s ‘cause he can’t love her like this—Fates know she don’t love herself.

In truth, he loves her too much, and seein’ her like this, even from deep down below, is breakin’ his heart all over again.

* * *

There’s a railroad line that runs the breadth of the land. It forks only once, way on down the track, so far down she’s never even been that way to see it. One side splits to carry cargo and passengers to the rest of the world, and the other side, well, it goes down below.

Or, at least—that’s all Momma says, so that’s all she knows.

She has no use for trains and steam engines and coal anyway, when the land is so dry and in need of attention and care. There are fields to plough and sow, rains to summon, fruits to bring forth—she ain’t got no time for starin’ down long and winding railways to nowhere.

Hermes comes around, sometimes, her brother and friend, his eyes so sad and heavy when he looks at her. He never says why, never tells her what brings forth the sorrow in his smile and the worry weighing on his brow. He ignores her when she asks, never answers her queries with anything but a sight and a soft hum under his breath.

Persephone—for that’s what she goes by, these days, no matter what face Demeter makes when she chooses it one day over the _Kore_ she has been for so long before—is content to live in her ramshackle little place along the line with her mama, and tend the earth.

It’s all she has ever known, all she remembers, and likely all she ever will know.

There’s a day where that changes, a strangely cool day in the middle of July when the wind whips cold and a train whistle heralds the arrival of an unscheduled engine. Persephone, drinking with Hermes in his bar, can taste the tang of iron and steel on her tongue instead of the whiskey she has just swallowed. It’s like nothin’ she’s ever known—summer is hers, and whatever’s on it’s way is decidedly _not._

“Somethin’s comin’” she says, looking down the tracks toward the dark engine—darker than any she’s ever seen, so black it seems to consume the sky behind it as it barrels toward the station.

“Some _one,_ ” Hermes hums, “and it’s about damn time, sister.”

“What—“

But Hermes is gone, has pulled one of his disappearing acts and leaves her with nothing but two empty tumblers and an echoing promise to “hold off yer momma” in his wake.

Instead, the door to the bar slams open and a man appears, a looming, tall shadow against the bright summer’s light outside. He wears a charcoal pinstripe suit, a long dark coat, and a pair of dark glasses over his eyes.

Despite the obstruction of the lenses, she is pinned in place by the intensity of his piercing gaze.

“Who’re you?” she challenges, half rising from her seat.

“Rules be _DAMNED,”_ he all but snarls, striding forward to seize her arm in a gentle grip that belied his obvious ire, “I am DONE with this.”

Persephone feels she should be frightened by his obvious wrath—or at least intimidated—but from the glare he levels at the ceiling she gathers his ferocious intensity is not directed toward her.

“Done with what?” she feels she must ask, and suddenly regrets it as that burning gaze _is_ turned upon her. She squirms, trying to break free of his grasp, but he merely tightens his grip and draws her tightly against his chest, cradling her against him.

“Everything,” he rumbles, and with a snap of his fingers the world dissolves, and she feels her connection to the earth slipping away as above melts into below and they appear without warning on a dead field beneath heavy grey skies. The ground is rent asunder, split by cracks and crevices, the road on which they stand one single winding path snaking in and around the pitted and scarred earth.

Persephone blinks. “This is the Underworld,” she breathes, looking around with no small amount of interest. Mama has only ever mentioned it in passing, Daddy only slightly more so and with a decidedly uncomfortable cast of his lip and an uncharacteristic look of regret. Hermes has only ever sighed and given her that one particularly sad look when she’s asked, and so she has learned over time to just leave it be.

But now……now she is _here_ , and it is so very different from anything she had ever imagined. The air is blisteringly hot, stifled by smog and smoke and filled with free-floating ash. She can hear the roar of forges and fires in the distance, the chug and screech of steam engines and mining carts, the clank of axes against stone. The fields in which they stand are barren, empty but for a few lonely shades staggering through the gloom. Above it all looms a monstrous wall, snaking around the distant city to enclose it in an impenetrable, unshakeable embrace.

“Bit depressing,” she deadpans, unable to tear her eyes from the bricks of the monstrosity before her.

Her companion grunts and removes his glasses. “It is the Underworld,” he replies.

Persephone’s breath hitches in her chest as she catches sight of the coal-dark eyes that are revealed to her as he turns. They’re just as intense as she perceived when they caught her gaze from behind the mirrored lenses, and now revealed they are infinitely more paralyzing in their depth. She can hardly move, immobilized by their scrutiny.

Finally he breaks their shared gaze, jerking his head away and clenching his hand into a tight fist at his side. “It is not a happy place,” he adds, and nods to the far left, where she can see a shimmering silver river snaking through the mists hanging low and heavy over the fields. “The River Lethe,” he murmurs, “potent enough that any mortal or goddess, apparently, instantly forgets his or her life.” There’s a certain chill to his words, an inflection placed upon “goddess”, that sets her teeth on edge.

“Why are we here?” she asks slowly, staring up into the craggy, worn face of this strange, tired god. Each and every one of her instincts are at war, nerve endings aflame with conflicting sensation, her fight-or-flight instincts all but wailing in confusion as the urge to flee and the desire to step closer battle within her. Everything about this god is dangerous, she can tell that much on her own, but even so….

“Mortals drink it so that they might move on to be reborn, and bear no lingering ties to past lives,” he continues, ignoring her. “Rarer still are the immortals who drink its waters, for they must linger on with no notion of their past selves but with no hope either of rebirth.”

His hands grasp her shoulders, gently turning her to face in the opposite, and she startles to realize he is shaking as he holds her. “And that,” he points with one long white finger, voice a bass rumble against her back, “is the River Mnemosyne. One who drinks from _its_ waters remembers all that is lost—or so it is with mortals.” His face is shuttered. “I know of no gods or goddesses who have partaken of its draught.”

Persephone twists so that she can stare up in that face, so foreign and yet so very familiar and dear all at the same time. “I don’t understand,” she says baldly, glancing back and forth between the two rivers. She can see they are hundreds of miles apart, the illusion of nearness maintained only by the vast flatness of the fields on which they stand.

“I know,” he murmurs, and she starts at the raw emotion in his deep voice.

He tugs her close once more and the world dissolves, reforming to settle them next to the steadily-flowing Mnemosyne. Persephone blinks, disconcerted by the sudden shift of surroundings. “Drink,” the dark god commands, conjuring a jet-black flask and extending it to her. “Drink, and know yourself.”

“I know myself just fine, thank you,” she spits back, knocking his offering aside. The strange turn of the day is catching up with her and she is rapidly losing her patience with…whatever all this is.

The flask clatters to the ground and he frowns. “Please.” There is a waver to his voice that tells her just how often he says _that_ word to anyone, and a raw desperation to his words that shakes her to the marrow of her bones.

Her conviction wavers. “You seem to know my name,” she deflects, stalling for time as she scrambles to make sense of events, “but you don’t seem to have given me yours.” Her hand smooths over the back of her head, trailing down to wind through the curls that tumble over her shoulders—a nervous habit she ain’t never been able to shake, not that _he_ needs to know that.

His chuckle is dry and without any actual humor, and somethin’ tells her he knows _exactly_ what she’s playin’ at. “You know mine, and know it well—you’ve known all of my names, and likewise have forgotten each and every one.”

Persephone blinks, certain pieces of this ever-expanding puzzle beginning to click together in her mind. “You think…I’ve forgotten something,” she concludes, peering up at him. “That I’ve forgotten you?” Honeyed curls bounce as she shakes her head in denial. “I know my whole life,” she argues, pacing away from him and staring out at the rushing river. “I’d know it if I were missing memories, if I were missing _myself_.”

His eyes are dark and sad and too _knowing,_ boring straight through her body and into whatever it is that comprises her soul _. “_ How old are you, Persephone?” he asks softly, head quirking.

“I—“ A number comes to mind, but as she thinks about it there’s no way it is correct, for she can see plain the wrinkles at the corners of her eyes and feel the creaks in her knees. She is a goddess of similar generation to Hermes, and he is practically _ancient_ , and… She shakes her head, trying to clear it, and paces back toward her dark companion. “What—“

“Please drink,” Hades—for it can only be he—begs her. And he does beg, actually falls to his knees before her and catches her hand and brings it to his lips. He kisses her knuckles, a gentle barely-there brush of lips against skin, and then rests his forehead against the back of her hand, kneeling in silent supplication as he implores her to partake of the nearby river.

Silently, Persephone slips her hand from his grasp, keeping her head low to avoid his eyes. _Keep your head low,_ her mind laughs, the words dancing through in mocking revelry. She shakes, stiffens, then squares her shoulders and kneels to retrieve the discarded flask. One trembling hand reaches out, dips down, fills the flask to the brim with the frigid waters of Mnemosyne. The river is freezing, instantly numbing her hand, and its touch sends a wave of gooseflesh rippling up her arm.

“What happens if I have nothing to remember?” she asks quietly as she sits back with her prize. “If I drink this and nothing happens? Is it dangerous?”

“I don’t know.” His reply is brutally honest, and she’d be lyin’ if she didn’t see the uncertainty hangin’ heavy in his eyes. “But when has a hint of danger ever stopped you from doing anything?”

She stares at him for a long moment—for he is right, damn him—and sees a series of glittering jewels clinging to his cheek. Her eyes widen at the tears, for there is no denying that is what they are, and then shift down to the flask in her hand.

To know herself (but she has _always_ known herself, hasn’t she?) or to go on not knowing…to take a chance, or remain timid and safe—there really ain’t no question about it, is there? “Bah.” She downs the water in a single, fluid gulp.

It takes a moment for the liquid to settle, slipping fluidly down her throat to pool in her belly. Persephone gasps, first at the icy cold, and then at the agony that begins to spread throughout her body. Pain like she has never knownin this life radiates outward, beginning low in her stomach and moving up and out, creeping up her spine and down her arms, climbing higher to curl about her head and twist and wind its way into her mind.

She doubles over on herself, weeping, head throbbing like it is about to split in two. Distantly she is aware of being caught in a pair of strong arms, cradled in gentle hands and lowered to the ground and cradled against a solid chest. Memories flash through her mind, slow at first and then faster and faster until they are a veritable whirlwind of sight and sound and sensation. She sees a garden, millennia ago, a man dark of hair and a young woman bright of eye—both smiling brightly and clasping hands, a set of matching rings glinting on kissing fingers. She sees another garden in another time, the man slightly older this time, the woman’s face uncommonly blank and her eyes unkowing. Then another garden, another era—the pattern continues, and the overwhelming despair that has begun to claim her tightens its viselike grip on her heart.

They’re _her_ , they’re all her, all these blank, empty women who start anew every few decades, every few centuries and continue on as a new goddess. All her, and—

“—Hades!”

His name bursts from her lips, and her eyes fly open, hands rising to press against her mouth as she tries and fails to hold in the heaving, terrible sobs that wrack her body. Oh, oh no, what has she _done_ , what has—

She screams, lurching out of his arms and throws herself to the ground, beating the muddy riverbed with her fists and weeping into the dark earth. It’s all so much, too much, so much _pain_ and so many emotions, the torment to which she has subjected him—she can hardly bear the thought of any of it.

Those careful hands catch her once more, bring her back into that careful embrace, cradle her against him as though she is the most precious thing in the entire universe. And—

—she _is_ , she realizes with sudden alacrity and another wrenching sob, she is his universe and his world and he’s been _alone_ for all this time—

“No, no,” she whimpers, twisting in his arms, fighting his embrace. She has to get away, can’t be here, don’t deserve him never did never will— She who promised him forever and has given him none of that, she who has forsworn their vows so many times over so many thousands of years. “Oh no, I’m sorry, I’m sorry _, so sorry--I can’t—“_

She wails and breaks free, weeping, sprints blindly along the riverbank, needing to get away, get somewhere far far away from the pity in his eyes, from the hurt and betrayal and wrenching aching _agony_ she sees reflected back at her from hundreds of memories from different lives and times.

What has she _done?!_

Persephone’s foot catches in a hollow and she stumbles, hurtling headfirst toward the ground. She hardly cares, cannot bring herself to brace for the impact, numb to everything but the torrent of horror and regret flooding her from the inside out.

He catches her, of course, catches her and holds her fast with all the love and compassion she certainly does not deserve.

“I’ve got you,” he soothes, “you’re..you’ll be okay.” It sounds as much a reassurance to himself as it is to her, his words catching in that rocky throat and coming out choked. Still, the hand that smooths itself across her brow and hair is steady, his chest solid against her cheek and his arm unyielding where it cradles her against him. He is seated fully on the muddy river bank, uncaring of his suit, has her tucked snug against him with chin on the top of her head.

“Shhh, Seph, it’s alright. Let it out, let it all go.” His voice is a low rumble against her, the familiar if long-forgotten bass a soothing growl as it washes over her.

She presses her face to his neck, stains his shirt and vest with her tears as she weeps, hands rising to weakly clutch at the breast of his suit jacket. The air around them is stagnant and warm, the fumes of the forges hanging low and heavy, but still she shivers, chilled to the bone by the icy waters she has consumed and the horrific realizations they have borne.

Hades shrugs out of his jacket without thought, careful not to jostle her, and slips it over her shoulders, bared as they are by her simple summer dress.

Slowly, ever so painfully slowly, she raises her hands to his shoulders, brushes her thumbs across his jaw, feels the familiar scrape of stubble against her fingers. Her hands creep higher, following the slant of his mouth, tracing the outline of his lips, the curve of his brow. “Hades,” she breathes, combing her fingers through his hair, marveling with no small amount of sorrow at the silver strands. “Oh lover, what time we have lost.”

A breathy sob catches in her chest and she throws herself against him, wrapping her arms as far as they’ll go around his broad shoulders and burrowing her face into the crook of his neck. “I’m so sorry…”

He bows his head, rests his brow on her shoulder, and simply _holds_ her, his arms and the thrum of his pulse beneath her cheek the steady solid constants she absolutely needs.

“Don’t be sorry,” he finally murmurs, breaking the tentative silence that has settled over them. “Don’t ever be sorry—wasn’t you, was _never_ your fault.” He tips his nose against her neck and breathes in deep, hums as his senses flood with _her._ “We’ll deal with faults and blame and _punishment_ later,” and the ground groans ominously, shifting plates and rocks complaining loudly deep beneath them, “but it has _never_ been you.” He squeezes her shoulders gently, so tenderly that she barely even feels the pressure against her, and inhales deeply. “ _I’m_ sorry,” he apologizes, talking now into her shoulder where he has buried his face, “I made you hurt so, lover.”

Persephone jerks back to give him an incredulous stare, and _Fates_ is it such a damn nice feelin’ to feel her fiery temper—an old, long forgotten friend—flarin’ to life to throw at him from her golden-brown eyes.

“What the _hell_ are you apologizin’ for, husband?” she asks, crossing her arms and glaring at him. “I’d take a thousand times worse’n that to come back to you.” The fight leaves her suddenly and she sags, pinching the bridge of her nose and swaying forward. “Shouldn’t’ve had to come back to you at all, though,” she whispers, and then he has her gathered close again, lips tickling her ear as he tells her, repeatedly, that she ain’t at fault.

“Oh, lover,” he tells her, smoothing his hands up and down her back, curling them around her waist protectively, clutching her possessively to his chest, unable to let her leave his grasp for even a moment. “I have missed ya so.” He kisses her then, and it is not the tender kiss of Proserpina and Pluto in the garden, not the fiery kiss of Hel and Idun, not even the passionate meeting of mouths of Yami and death—

—it is Hades kissing Persephone, a man in love with a woman, rediscovering his wife after so many thousands of years apart.

It is slow at first, achingly so, the lightest of touches as their lips press together. He tips her head back with single long finger beneath her chin, slants his mouth ever so slightly before they brush, moves against her with such a tentative, joyful _hope_ that she almost wants to weep anew. Persephone answers in kind, slips her hand up his neck to tickle the soft hairs at the base of his head, fingers inching slightly higher as the kiss extends until her hand is nestled at in the thickest part of his silver hair, catching and curling and carding through those bright strands and tugging him more insistently against her.

Lips part, one tongue seeking the other, relearning territory left uncharted and untouched for far too long. His broad hands cradle her jaw, delicate and ever-aware of the power they hold, thumbs tracing the sharp lines of her cheekbones as he devours her mouth.

Persephone hums into his mouth, her eyes fluttering open to peer up at him in unmitigated delight, her gaze overflowing with the love he has missed seeing for so long, clouding with the lust he has only ever caught glimpses of in the fleeting moments he has managed to steal over their long years apart.

She draws back, panting slightly, and presses her forehead to his with a soft smile on her face. “I love you, Hades,” and she can _feel_ the tension leave his body as it is replaced instead by joy and relief as he hears words uttered that he has for far, far too long only heard in dreams.

He tucks an errant curl behind her ear, fingers lingering at the corner of her eye, tracing the slight score of crow’s feet the years have left to mark the long and lonely passage of the years between them. “Love you too,” he replies, and even though he blinks, quickly, she sees the tears glinting in his stern eyes.

Her fingers walk up the breadth of his chest, linger at the dip of his collar, and fish under his shirt to pull out the ever-present chain he wears about his neck. “Think ya’ might like t’put this back on?” she asks, and he can’t resist dipping down to chase the teasing smile from her lips with a kiss.

He is not ashamed to admit his hands shake slightly as he unclasps the heavy chain, slides the dark wedding band from it, and passes it to her so that she might slip it back into place on his finger. Her own he conjures anew, twisting his forefinger and thumb to summon ore straight from the ground to form a glinting new band. “What do you say, lover,” he asks,still seated in the mud with her resting in his lap, her right hand and his left still clasped. “Will you take this old man for your own?”

Persephone smiles, and the world above bursts into bloom.

“As if I could say no,” she tells him, and offers her hand. The ring slides home, and suddenly, instantly, the world _settles,_ clicks into place, and—

—their song starts anew.


End file.
